Trip back, Jeddah to Ramallah

In a normal world, you’d be taking a flight to the nearest airport to your house, then a taxi or bus ride to your house - an hour or a little more.

Not in this part of the world, apparently. This is what my trip was like:

Flight from Jeddah to Amman - 1 hour 40 min
Passport control and customs in Amman, getting my luggage - 20 minutes
Taxi ride to the border crossing point (King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge) - 50 minutes
Clearing Israeli passport control and customs at the Palestinian border - 4 hours. FOUR fucking hours.
Bus ride to Jerusalem - 30 minutes
Then, bus ride to Ramallah - 40 minutes

Getting home, dropping your luggage, and eating half a pint of ice-cream - Priceless!! :)

Getting in and out of the Israeli passport control, which included multiple security checks, a search of my luggage - including browsing through my books, and customs also checking my handback - took as long as the rest of the trip.

And because it’s Saturday, and on Fridays and Saturdays the Israeli border control chicks need their beauty sleep, they open the border for 2 and a half or 3 hours (from 8:00 to 10:30 or 11:00). They announce the border is open until 14:00: bullshit.

And when you think that the Palestinians standing around me had to queue for 5 or 6 hours, starting at 5 am, to make sure they were within the quota of the day (YES - the Israeli army imposes a quota on the number of people allowed to go home) you realise that, despite it all, I still got it easy.

I don’t know what infuriates me the most.